1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a font controlling method and apparatus in, for example, a so-called on-screen display (OSD).
2. Description of the Prior Art
Up to now, for displaying letters etc on a screen surface, the fonts of the same size are used in letters of all languages, such as, for example, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish , Japanese or Chinese, to make display of the OSD.
However, the number of display letters or the number of dots required for display (number of pixels) differ appreciably from one language to another. Specifically, in languages employing alphabetical letters, the number of letters of a word is larger, whereas, in languages employing kanji letters, the number of strokes that make up a kanji letter is larger, even though the number of letters is small.
Thus, in OSD display of letter strings of respective languages, the following problems arise.
(1) If, for example, it is desired to display a sentence made up of plural words in a given picture display range where there is imposed a limitation on the number of letters displayed, there are occasions wherein, in the course of spelling the last word in a given line, the limitation on the number of letters that can be displayed in the above-mentioned picture display range, that is,the limitations on the number of letters for one line is exceeded. In such case, the conventional practice is to use an abbreviated spelling of a word in the line or to divide the line into two lines for display. However, if the spelling corresponding to the abbreviation of the word in question is used, such spell means a word inexplicit in meaning for a user who is not aware of what word is denoted by the abbreviated spelling. On the other hand, if the line is split in two lines, the resulting display tends to be extremely unintelligible to the user.
(2) There are also occasions wherein, depending on the specific language displayed, the display balance on the entire screen is not optimum for OSD display. For example, if a sentence is represented in English, the sentence can be represented on the entire screen , whereas, if the same sentence is represented in Japanese, it is partially displayed on a portion of the screen, thus worsening the display balance. On the other hand, in a language employing kanji letters, such as Japanese or Chinese, a large number of dots (pixels) are required for demonstrating the kanji letters with a large number of strokes.
(3) If, for example, a string of letters made up of plural letters and words, is to be displayed on a picture display range consisting of a pre-set number of pixels, and the number of letters for one line is large, it may be an occurrence that portions of the string of the letters are not comprised within the picture display range. That is, there are a variety of graphics display standards, such as so-called Extended Graphics Array (XGA), Video Graphics Array (VGA) or Super VGA (SVGA) in the display standards, such that, if the string of the letters is comprised within a single line in a certain display standard, it cannot be comprised within one line of the picture range in another display standard. The conventional practice for this case is to use the abbreviated spelling for the word in the string of letters, or to split the line into two lines. However, in such case, as in (1) above, the abbreviated spelling for the word in question means an inexplicit word for a user not aware of what word is actually meant by the abbreviated spelling, whereas, if a line is split into two lines, the result is a display difficult to understand for the user.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a font controlling method and apparatus in which, if letters etc of various different languages are displayed in OSD, well-balanced, easy-to-see and high-quality display may be assured without abbreviating the word or splitting a line into two two lines.
In order to solve the above problem, the font controlling method of the present invention finds the sort of the character to be displayed and the type of an input signal, determines the sort and the size of the font to be used based on the sort of the character and generates the input signal and the character display signal responsive to the sort and the size of the font.
Also, in order to solve the above problem, the font controlling apparatus of the present invention includes means for verifying the sort of the character to be displayed, means for verifying the sort of the input signal, means for determining the sort and the size of the font in use, based on the sort of the character and the input signal and means for generating the character display signal responsive to the sort and the size of the font.
In the font controlling method and apparatus according to the present invention, the type and the size of the font in use are determined based on the sort of the character to be displayed and on the input signal and the character display signal is generated responsive to the sort and the size of the font to enable display which is easy and comfortable to view, well-balanced and is of high quality without abbreviating a word or splitting a line into two lines.